


Like Fire and Powder

by morethanthedark (Kayndred)



Series: In a House by the Sea [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Shipwreckers, Blood, Curses, Fae & Fairies, Families of Choice, Multi, Non-con self-inflicted body horror, Prompt Fill, Secrets, Sickness, Sickness - Vomiting, Swearing, The Holy Artist Triumvirate, Trust Issues, Violence, Vomiting, Yelling things You Didn't Mean to Yell, fae, kindof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/morethanthedark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan, Feuilly and Grantaire are brothers refined through fire and blood and years of having each other’s backs. But the Amis are their <em>family</em>, and some secrets are too dangerous to keep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Fire and Powder

**Author's Note:**

> I present to you Part One of the Fae-story Sequel. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Titles for all three parts taken from Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene VI - Friar Lawrence lines nine through eleven:  
> These violent delights have violent ends  
> And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,  
> Which, as they kiss, consume.
> 
> By Order of Appearance:  
> Trigger Warnings for: NON-CON SELF-INFLICTED BODY HORROR  
> Trigger Warnings for: SICKNESS - VOMITING 
> 
> The above trigger warnings have been tagged for, but I thought it aught to be restated just in case.

Following the pilfering of the  _Arcadia_ , the residents of Lightpeak House fall into a routine born of years of post-shipwreck activity. Feuilly and Combeferre spend two weeks sorting their loot according to region of sale, packing items into inconspicuous trunks to be sent out to their covert stores spread along the coast. Joly, Marius and Bahorel attend classes at the local community university while Bossuet and Courfeyrac follow Enjolras around either fixing the house or accompanying him on short trips into town.

Jehan and Grantaire are very carefully absent, and for those two weeks no one thinks anything of it - it isn’t unusual for the two of them to take off on rambling tours through the town, or towns, coming back laden with art supplies and gifts. Normally Feuilly would go with them, searching out brushes and paper and all manners of things used in his many hobbies.

But he doesn’t, and that’s probably why they don’t get to see him before it’s almost too late.

—

There are shops peppered through the towns that The Friends ‘sell’ in, shops that are small and mostly unnoticed, often tucked between buildings or at the ends of blind alleys, their doors unpainted and their signs simple. They have no frontal displays, no doorbells, and, sometimes, no welcome mats. It takes a practiced eye - or the Sight - to root them out, which cuts down significantly on the number of wayward shoppers.

It’s Jehan who takes the path between the two stone buildings, the alley so narrow that Grantaire’s shoulders brush the walls of both neighboring stores as he passes through. The door at the end is thin and made of a light wood he doesn’t recognize, and he has to turn sideways to have enough room to open it and get into the shop.

Inside a heavy cloud of incense hangs from the ceiling and catches in the cobwebs, crowning Jehan in a vague purple halo before he moves from the threshold deeper into the room.

This is a place they visit often, although not always in the same town. The shopkeeper, an aged Ghillie Dhu who looks like a weathered redwood, allows them free reign over the goods scattered about his space as long as they leave their payments in the jar by the door. He peers out at them from behind a curtain made of spider-silk, long bumpy nose covered with summer blossoms. Grantaire and Jehan wave, the Ghillie Dhu nods, and they turn away from each other.

“What are you looking for?” Grantaire asks, eyes on Jehan while he lets his fingers pass over a table littered with intricate metalwork and gems. His hand curls around something smooth that gradually warms against his skin, and he tears his eyes from the poet to look at the fat black stone resting in his palm. It’s thin, shovel shaped, thicker in the middle than at the edges, and the side pressing into him is unnaturally smooth. He wraps his fingers around it and keeps moving, never looking at where his hands go until they stop over an item.

Jehan is humming to himself while inspecting a red candle, head tilting this way and that, bringing the wax to his face to sniff before putting it back down and picking up another one. “I’ll know it when I see it, I think. I just know that it’s  _here_.” And that was very typical of the way Jehan operated - he knew he needed something, and he could often find where to get it, he just wasn’t aware of what that something was until it was in his hand or he’d already gotten it back to the house. “What about you? Anything specific?”

He shrugs, rolls the gem between his hands. “Whatever this is and anything else that catches my fingers, I guess.” Jehan eyes the stone critically before nodding and spinning off into the vastness of the store, leaving Grantaire to his own devices.

In the end he buys only the stone, a set of sketch books with paper that feels like winter, and a knife carved out of some sort of bone, the blade a shining slash of obsidian against the white-grey of the hilt. The sheath it comes in has a complex mass of lines swirling across it, and it takes several minutes of searching to find the head of dragon, its tail sliding between its teeth to wrap several times around its neck.

He shivers, but straps it to his thigh anyway, and when they leave he drops a bag of birch seeds into the jar along with several river stones and a stone arrow head. Jehan spends almost ten minutes divesting himself of little odds and ends that have been caught up in his hair or on his person - ribbons, bells, a length of twine, a rabbit’s foot, a crow’s beak, several marbles, a small geode, a short poem, and a string of mismatched pearls. He shrugs when Grantaire arches a brow at him, picking up his own considerably larger haul and exiting with a distinct air of ‘whatever, man’. The passage swings quickly shut behind him.

Grantaire pushes at the door to follow him, but the wood resists and the door remains tightly shut. He’s just about to ram it with his shoulder when a low voice calls out from behind him. It sounds like dry leaves, or a spring wind through tall grass, and when he turns around the Ghillie Dhu is peering around the heavy silver curtain again, dark eyes wide in the shadows. He can see the outline of his wild hair from some unknown light source, twigs and nests wrapped up in the dark mane.

“Look to the water.” he whispers, his voice as haunting as naked branches rattling in a storm. “Look to the water.”

And then he’s gone, the curtain barely moving as he slides behind it, and a strong wind is pushing Grantaire out the door and after Jehan.

Back on the street Jehan is giving him the side eye, but when he turns around the alley and the tiny door are gone. He scratches the side of his chin and frowns, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck prickling up.

“What the fuck?”

—

He feels it first as an itch - something to absently scratch at while he whittles or writes, the passing of his blunt nails over his wrist as he does the laundry, a particularly rough dig between his shoulders when he wiggles his back against a corner of the house. He scratches passively at a section on his bicep, the curve of his ankle bone, the back of his knee - and thinks nothing of it.

The first time Feuilly’s nails come away bloody he doesn’t understand what’s happened, the dark stain so unusual that for a long time he just stares at his hand, struck still. He’s steady as he reaches up to touch his collarbone, the place his fingers had last been. They drag across the flesh there and come away wet, the heavy liquid dripping down his fingers, the side of his hand, and onto the floor.

It looks worse than it is, he finds, when he locks himself in the bathroom and pulls off his work shirt to look himself over. The length of his collarbone is a bloody mess, but the scratches themselves are shallow enough. He cleans them mechanically, running a warm cloth over them and dabbing at them with gauze until the bleeding subsides to a gentle ooze.

Then he fans his fingers out along the wound, barely touching the skin, and wills it into closing. The skin hesitates, fighting him, but knits together all the same.

That is the first time, but it is not the last.

—

The next time his hands come away bloody he’s spent the past two minutes watching his fingers scratch into the flesh of his calf, sweat beading on his brow and on his neck while his nails stutter and start in the tears of his skin. The muscles of his arms tense and fight against the movements of his hand, and he’s not in pain but the gore is there, staring him in the face.

Something is very, very wrong.

He grits his teeth and pulls against the compulsion, and he can feel the invisible bonds keeping his fingers scratching into himself, thinks  _No, no, no, no, no_ _,_  and his fingers wrench away from his leg when he gives another great heave.

For a long time all Feuilly does is lie on his back on the floor, panting while the sharp taste of blood drifts into the air. Bile climbs his throat and makes his mouth taste like despair, and he flings himself from the floor to the bathroom, barely quick enough to get the toilet seat up before his stomach is emptying itself in great rolling heaves.

Down the hall someone’s door opens, a quiet call of, “Feuilly?” echoing into the bathroom. Unable to respond while his rib-cage shakes and his grayed fingers claw against the sides of the toilet, all he can do is let out a gravely moan between heaves and pray that it ends soon.

It’s Bahorel who comes into the bathroom, tutting and kneeling down to bundle Feuilly’s hair into one hand and rubbing firm circles between his shoulders with the other. “What’ve you done now, little dog?” He asks, gravel voice low and soothing. Feuilly only has enough in him to groan pathetically again, body shaking with each fresh roll of his stomach, and Bahorel tuts a second time.

They stay that way for a long time, Feuilly gradually coming down from his sudden bout of retching, the color returning to his face while his cheek is pressed against the rim of the toilet.

Bahorel sits beside and behind him, legs stretched out to bracket the smaller man, his hand still rubbing Feuilly’s back. His long black hair is pulled away from his face in a lengthy plait, making the sharp lines of his cheekbones and his crooked nose stand out in relief beneath his skin. One notched eyebrow is ticked up in curiosity, but he doesn’t say anything while the other man collects himself and masters his breathing.

“I don’t know - no. I couldn’t stop.” He eventually grits out, voice as raw as his throat, tongue heavy with the taste of acid. He re-positions his leg at the same time Bahorel’s brows crinkle down, displaying the gory slash in his calf and the blood that’s dripped down across his skin since his mad dash to relieve his stomach. Breath hisses between Bahorel’s teeth, loud in the quiet between them, and he reaches out to run a calloused finger along the edge of it.

Feuilly’s blood is dark against Bahorel’s already dark skin, like a drop of the night sky has landed on his finger, almost black in the light of their bathroom. The other man observes it, twists his hand this way and that, and when his eyes find Feuilly’s they are stone hard and serious.

“You couldn’t stop?” He asks, and if Feuilly weren’t what he is he might not recognize the subtle tinge of fright that edges those words.

He nods, and Bahorel’s face grows shadowed for a long beat, Feuilly’s faintly rasping breath the only noise in the little room.

Eventually Bahorel comes back to himself, frowning at Feuilly’s leg while his lips and his eyebrows contort, sorting out what he wants to say.

“Can you fix it?” Is what wins out in the end as he stands to wash the blood from his fingers. Feuilly rolls his lip between his teeth before quickly releasing it, tasting anew the bile in his mouth.

“Probably.” He says, and leans forward to press the flat of his palm against the gash. It’s almost too long to be covered by the entirety of one hand, and he flinches when the drying blood meets his skin. For a moment all he does is stare at the covered section of skin, concentrating on centering himself and eliminating the panic that had gripped him like claws. Then he draws in, searching out the place where his magic lives, a  _deep-warm-dark_ place that smells of thunder and the forest, like the rolling, grass covered hills at the foot of a mountain. It surges into him, channels out and down his arm quick as lightning, sliding into the torn flesh to knit it new again.

There’s a crackle, a snapping pop that makes Bahorel look at him in alarm, and then a searing pain lances up his shoulder and down to his ankle, his hand flinging away from the wound before he actively registers doing it. A throbbing hum takes up residence in his bones, sharp and long, but what holds his attention is the wound on his leg - it pulses and twitches, splitting at the edges and steadily oozing black blood anew down his calf. The flesh around the tear is dark grey and prickling, and Feuilly slaps at the wound twice before the pain registers and he keens, falling to his back on the tile.

When he’s done writhing on the floor, with Bahorel pinning his wrists and muttering soothing nonsense - when did that happen? - he chances a glance at his leg, anticipating the worst.

There’s fresh blood on his calf, a stream of it that drips down the back of his leg and down to his ankle, black on the bathroom floor. The edges of the wound are ragged and throbbing, but the darkness of his skin is gone, and he breathes out a sigh of relief and lets his head fall back against the tile.

Bahorel spends a minute eyeing him speculatively, probably wondering if he’s going to have another freak out, before levering himself up and crouching at Feuilly’s side. “You gonna be okay?” His voice is lined with careful mirth, but there’s a tenseness to his eyes and the set of his shoulders that Feuilly reads as apprehension.

After all, no one currently in the house would have any idea how to fix whatever is wrong with him.

“Yeah.” He sighs out, sitting up. Everything aches and throbs, and all he wants to do is curl up into a ball and sleep for a week. “Help me bandage this?”

The taller man rolls his eyes and stands to root through the medicine cabinet, says, “Of course. Can’t just leave you on the floor like some sort of crime scene, can I?”

Feuilly snorts and lays back down on the floor, the ceiling filling his vision with pale blue.

At his sides his fingers twitch and scratch on the tile.

—

It goes on like this for the next week and a half - he scratches pits and gouges into his flesh, tears at skin with teeth and nails. He wakes in the middle of the night with his fingers in his mouth, bloody and tattered - he rubs his back against the carpet until the skin of his shoulders oozes blood.

And he still can’t feel it.

Bahorel patches him up each time - wraps him in gauze and creams and bandages that do little to deter his wandering hands. He pets and whispers quiet nothings to him, plies him with alcohol and sparring, takes him running along the beach at all hours of the day and night when Feuilly feels the itch grow like fire under his skin.

It’s in the middle of the second week, the last hot spike of the summer before winter creeps up on them. Feuilly is splattered with half healed wounds and black scabs, all covered by bandages to hide the inhuman darkness of his blood. He’s been dodging Joly and Combeferre’s worried eyes and medically trained minds since the night in the bathroom. Even in the heat he’s wearing long sleeves and pants, the fabric worn and light enough that the slow wind that passes across the cliff top moves through it. He’s lying on the grass beyond the back porch, stretched out wide beneath the sun, one hand held above his face, palm to the sky.

His fingers are black, darker than a starless night, his nails short but tapered into points. A fine dusting of dark hair - soft, springy, wiry - runs along his knuckles, the same color as his skin.

He stays like that for a long time, his hand eventually falling to his side while the sun creeps along overhead.

Bahorel finds him at meal time, a thick envelope in his hand that he drops onto Feuilly’s face. It smells like lavender and wood smoke, the seal pressing against his nose. He lifts it off his cheek and stares at the impression in the red wax, the carefully pressed imprint of a quill on fire catching the sunlight.

The seal pries away easily, and Feuilly pulls the single sheet of parchment out without flourish, releasing a cloud of pale purple dust and the scent of tobacco.

The letter is in Jehan’s neat, looping script, small swirling doodles from Grantaire edging in on the corners of the page. He scans it quickly, hoping for some sign that he is not alone in his confusion, but there are no references to anyone coming to harm in the missive.

But, the silver lining is still there.

“They’re a couple days away.” He says, looking up at Bahorel, back lit and sharpened by the sun. “They’re about two day’s ride out and they’re coming home.”

—

The air tastes strange in his mouth as they start up the gentle incline to the house, sharp and unpleasant. Wary, Grantaire turns his head, lips parted, eyes narrowed, gaze searching through the speckling of trees that creeps along the foot of the hill. The hair on his arms prickles, and he takes an involuntary step toward the tree line before Jehan’s hand is snapping out and grabbing his wrist in a vice.

“I feel it too.” He whispers, tone low right next to Grantaire’s ear. “But we’re going to the house.” Compulsion threads his words with power, lighting up on Grantaire and snapping his spine straight. It’s only when Jehan releases his arm that he realizes he was straining against the other man’s hold.

They pick up the pace after that, and even with their arms laden down with heavy cloth bags full of trinkets they still make quick work of the trek, the sun a double hand span above the horizon line by the time they reach the path to the door.

Bossuet is in the main room when they finally make their way through the mud room and down the entry hall, a book in his hands and his glasses perched precariously on his nose. He starts when Grantaire scuffs one of the bags against an end table, the glasses falling to the floor and making a distinct crack.

“Oh blast.” He mutters, closing the book and sighing in exasperation before turning to smile widely at the two wayward Friends. “You’re back! Have a good trip?”

Jehan nods and smiles back, launching into a wordy retelling of their adventures through the coastal towns while Grantaire shuffles past him and up the stairs into the art room. He sets the bags down unceremoniously before locking the door and darting back down the stairs, intent on finding out what, exactly, is tainting the air. Jehan glances at him briefly out of the corner of his eye while Grantaire passes by, the uptick of his eyebrow communicating more than the long ramble he’s going on about a tea shop in Mullhold.

Grantaire doesn’t need to be told twice.

Finding Feuilly is like finding a bruise on your body you didn’t know you had - sudden, sharp, painful. The scent of heavy blood hits Grantaire the minute he opens the door to the indoor laundering room, his elbow barking against the frame as he stumbles inside.

The other man is seated on a three-legged stool in his underwear, his feet planted on the tile.

There are open slashes and half healed tears up and down his arms and legs, across his chest and over his shoulders. His hands are a black mess of blood and skin, and his eyes, when he looks into Grantaire’s, are a dull filmy yellow.

“Grantaire.” The word comes out of him like a bark, raw and wet sounding, and it takes only a moment for Grantaire to descend on him, hands on either side of his face, tilting his head this way and that. There’s no resistance - Feuilly lets his head roll between Grantaire’s palms like his bones are made of liquid. Tears prick Grantaire’s eyes.

“Oh Feuilly,” he can’t get anything more than a whisper out - bile is rising in his throat. “Oh, little dog, what have they done to you?”

The redhead shakes, from toes to shoulders, eyes unfocused. “Don’t - don’t know.” He says, licking his chapped lips. Black blood is oozing out of the cracks and between his teeth, his tongue a dark purple against the shadowed red of the inside of his mouth. “Couldn’t stop scratching.” And as he says it a hand comes up to dig its nails into the flesh just below his eye.

Grantaire hisses and snatches at the wrist before him, only to be surprised when Feuilly’s arm locks up against his pulling. Feuilly whimpers, turning his face away, and Grantaire eventually succeeds in removing the nails from what little purchase they’d had in Feuilly’s face.

“Can’t… can’t heal it.” He whispers against Grantaire’s wrist, breath sharp and shallow over the artists skin. He looks like seven kinds of hell, and there’s nothing more that Grantaire wants to do than the find the bastard who put Feuilly under a curse and beat the shit out of him.

Because that’s what it is, clouding the air along with the scent of Feuilly’s blood - a curse. It coats his tongue and his throat in  _rot_  and  _decay_  and _pain_.

But he can’t do that with Feuilly bleeding like a fountain in their washroom, and he knows that Jehan won’t be able to stall Bossuet forever before word gets around the house that they’re back. And then what is he supposed to do? Hide?

Feuilly whimpers in his hold, and Grantaire would tuck him under his chin if he weren’t afraid it would hurt him more. His thoughts are racing, searching for possible avenues that will lead him to being able to fix whatever this is. He’s torn between spiriting Feuilly away and the bonds they have with the Amis. They’re a family, the most important thing in Grantaire’s life - but there are some things he knows families can’t weather.

Feuilly’s life, or involving the family in a thing the three of them thought long buried?

With the other man bleeding and wheezing in his hands there really isn’t much of a choice.

Leaning forward, forcing Feuilly’s eyes to focus on his, he lowers his voice to something sub-audible and stares down his bleeding friend with all the seriousness he has in him.

“Who’ve you told, Feuilly.” Between them there’s no question about what he’s talking about, no miscommunication to be had. There is only one truth more valuable than their existence in their lives, and Grantaire needs to know what Feuilly has said. “I need to know before I do anything else - who have you told?”

Feuilly looks at him, eyes misted by pain and curse-work, a sad, sick yellow in the light of the room, and whispers only one name into the tense silence between them. He says it like a prayer, like it’s his dying breath, like it’s the only right thing he’s done since anything began.

“Bahorel.”

—

His heart twists when he has to leave Feuilly in the washroom, steeping in blood and sweat, but he can’t take him with him when it’s time to hunt down Jehan. He can feel the curse on his skin, crawling up his arms and down his spine.

It’s a specific bit of magic though - aimed at Feuilly and him alone, and that sends Grantaire’s stomach writhing with a whole slew of terrible thoughts.

Jehan has relocated to one of the salons beyond the living room, the wall of windows to the far right casting the gathered Friends in long, gold bands of light. Almost everyone is there, save for Feuilly himself, Enjolras and Courfeyrac. The whys of that don’t particularly concern him just then - he’s busy analyzing the faces of his housemates and friends, trying to see if Jehan has said anything that might segue into the discussion he knows they’re going to have to go through.

But it seems like Jehan is regaling the group with the story of how they discovered the three-story tea shop in Windcastle, meaning that it’ll be up to Grantaire to bring up their current issue.

He doesn’t want this - doesn’t want to be the one to break their oath, even if he has their consent - doesn’t want to face his friends - his,  _their_ , family - and tell them the whole truth and nothing but, so help him.

But Feuilly is bleeding through holes in his skin that he he made himself and the house smells like something insidious that sits heavy on his tongue, stone-like.

Something is eating Feuilly, and Grantaire can’t just do  _nothing_.

There’s a chorus of hello’s and happy exclamations when he enters the room fully, at least until it registers with them that something is wrong. He doesn’t know what look he’s got on his face that makes everyone go quiet and attentive, but the way Jehan twists his lips and blinks once, slowly, means that he must look terrible.

“Where are Courfeyrac and Enjolras?” He asks, and his voice is more serious than even he’s heard it in a long time, and he’s not even trying.

Combeferre is the one who answers, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees and twist his fingers together, eyes curious and restrained. He has questions, Grantaire can feel them building up behind his teeth, but when Combeferre speaks it’s only to say, “They’re upstairs writing letters. They said they’d be done later.”

Well, no one has time for that, clearly. “They need to be here for this.”

“What do you mean?” Marius asks, but Grantaire is already turning away and striding to the bottom of the staircase, and for the first time in a long time he reaches out with his awareness, pinning Enjolras and Courfeyrac’s heartbeats to the upper office.

He breathes, once, long and slow, settling his voice and feeling. A thundering hum is building in him, but at the moment he can’t tell if it’s his heartbeat or the sudden rise of his long dormant power from the place where he’s put it to sleep.

“ _Enjolras! Courfeyrac!_ ” He bellows, and there are glasses on the foyer table that shake with the pitch of it. “ _Get down here! **Now**!_ ”

A twist of steam leaks between his teeth at the end, throat and stomach warm beyond the touch of drink, and he can hear two sets of frantic footsteps rushing from the room and down the halls toward the landing.

There’s a crunching noise from his right, and it takes him a minute to realize that he’s dug his fingers into the wood of the banister, splinters erupting up around his digits and falling to the floor when he extracts his hand from the decorative curl.

He doesn’t wait to see them come thundering down the stairs, doesn’t wait to see that Enjolras eyes the banister with something like abject curiosity before following Courfeyrac down the halls. Instead Grantaire leaves, spins on his heel and marches back to stand behind Jehan, left hand on his shoulder and right shoved into the pocket of his jacket.

There’s no blood on his fingers, and the grey had faded almost immediately, but he can’t chance it, not yet.

Courfeyrac enters first, looking wild and frantic, and Grantaire feels a brief flash of guilt for just belting out commands at him when he’s probably been working with Enjolras all day. The blond, on the other hand, steps into the room with something like a mixture of fury and curiosity darkening his eyes, and it’s strange to see but not unpleasant. At least he isn’t already in a rage.

“You called?” He asks, crossing his arms over his chest and arching a brow in the same way he does when Grantaire stages an argument against his. Courf drops into a desk chair, Jehan’s subtle head shake deterring him from sitting on the couch by the poet’s preferred wing-back.

Grantaire’s hand tightens minutely on Jehan’s shoulder, eyes sweeping from face to face while dread pools in his stomach. Jehan sits straighter, hands folded on his lap and ankles crossed, looking exceedingly regal in his lavender floral print vest and pale pink dress shirt with its lime green pinstripes.

Fury washes over the dread at the memory of Feuilly, his fingers latching into his skin. He takes a deep breath, willing himself to stop shuddering, and begins.

“As some of you may have noticed, Feuilly hasn’t been acting normal recently.” His gaze goes to Combeferre and Joly, who nod in mutual concern, and then to Bahorel, whose shuttered expression is cracking under the cloud of frustration that he’s trying to fight back. The others look between them, nodding mutely, and he goes on.

“This is because he’s cursed.”

Whatever Bahorel had been holding in his hands snaps in two at the same time Joly lets out a surprised hissing breath, Marius and Courfeyrac gasping in tandem. Enjolras’ eyes widen before his face goes blank. Grantaire hates that face.

“And how do you know.” He says, because Enjolras doesn’t ask questions, he makes demands, and the hand in Grantaire’s pocket flexes.

The moment of truth, now. He inhales through his nose and says, as clear as he can, “I felt it.”

The silence that falls on the room is brittle, shock turning everyone’s face pale.

Grantaire knows what they’re thinking, knows the conclusions they are coming to. Normal people like Bahorel, Enjolras, Marius - they can’t feel magic, any magic, beyond a vague and nebulous sense of wrongness, or so he’s heard. Only the fae can feel magic to its full extent, deciphering between curses and hexes, blessings and charms.

He’s implying that he’s more than human, much more. He just doesn’t want to say  _how_  much.

Jehan places one hand on his, squeezing his fingers, eyes closed against the  _feelings_  filling the room, heavy and tumultuous like a storm cloud. Combeferre, with vague ideas and hypotheses confirmed - Courfeyrac, looking between Grantaire and Jehan and reading in the wrong direction - Bossuet and Joly, marked thick with disbelief and something like curiosity, tasting of faint fear - Marius, a whirlwind of distressed relief and sick despair.

Enjolras, who cycles between shock, outraged disbelief, and  _betrayal_.

Only Bahorel is calm, a quiet pulse of resignation in their storm of feelings. Combeferre eyes him, brow quirked in curiosity. “You knew?”

“I knew about Feuilly.” He says, uncaring of the way the focus of the room swings to him. “He told me, about a half a year ago.”

Grantaire had suspected as much - Feuilly was the sort to give his loyalty with his love, but earning it in full took an age and a day. He wasn’t surprised that Bahorel, who was physically intimidating in the same way frozen fire was, was the one that Feuilly had told. But still…

“How much did he tell you?” Jehan asks, voice lake-still and calm. Grantaire knows what monsters lurk in those depths, but the other man is collected and curious, and he knows that Jehan would never unleash his anger on their family.

Bahorel, when he speaks, is solemn. Fitting, considering the secret he knows. “He gave me his true name.”

Grantaire closes his eyes slowly, hoping beyond hope that what he thinks happened didn’t really.

—

Fire and shame twist Enjolras chest into a mass of pain, and he feels… he feels  _betrayed_. He thought they were, at best, at  _least_ , friends, but - but this?

He has trouble maintaining eye contact with Grantaire, his attention instead drifting down to look at Jehan’s long fingers wrapped around the painter’s hands, gaze stony as he looks out at their assembly.

He wonders how long they’ve known each other, how long Jehan has known that Grantaire is something other than what he appears to be. He wonders about the distance that the Others that live in the forest keep from the house, about the mermaids and the kelpie and all the other creatures they have agreements with. He wonders how many of them came about because Grantaire is something - something else.

(It stings like a slap to the face, like the breath has been taken from his lungs. Long nights of discussion and wild arguments flash before his eyes, mornings finding Grantaire on their porch swing, asleep, curled around one of their many half-feral cats. Hours of watching Grantaire work while the other man is unaware, crafting their friends from dyes and paints, fascinated by his clever fingers and the concentration etched into his brow. Missions where Grantaire plunges into the sea, fearless, and hauls up chests and nets and all sorts of unusual things, grinning from ear to ear and dripping, his shirt clinging to his skin or gone entirely.

Was any of it real, he wonders. Was it all a lie, a - a  _glamour_?

Was the reason Enjolras felt what he did because Grantaire thought it would be  _funny_?)

The others are riled up, questions clamoring from their mouths, gaining volume as they try to be heard, demanding answers.

“What are you?”

“Who cursed him?”

“What is  _Feuilly_?”

“Jehan how long have  _you_  known?”

“Can we fix him?”

“Have you ever glamoured or coerced any of us?”

“What can you do?”

“What  _can’t_ you do?”

“How do we know we can trust you.” He spits, venom dripping from every word. He’s angry, hurt, and he barely notices that the others quiet when he speaks, sees only, from his peripheral vision, Grantaire’s eyes widen and his face pale, Jehan’s fingers tightening in what must be a painful grip. He thought - he doesn’t know what he thought, what he’s thinking, but the words keep coming.

“How can we trust that you  _haven’t_  glamoured any of us? If you have, it’s not like we’d be able to tell anyway. What’s to say that you haven’t, that you aren’t one of the Kings conscripted spies?” His hands are fists at his sides, and he doesn’t know when he started taking slow, menacing steps forward but he can’t stop. “We’ve trusted you with everything - with all our plans and missions. You know where our  _safe houses are_  - how can we know that you aren’t some traitor?” A laugh rips from him, raw, jagged, dark, and Grantaire looks like he’s been punched and that hurts too, so much. “You don’t even believe in our cause in the first place! You’ve always said that our goals were futile - and you would know, wouldn’t you, if you’re reporting to the King! I always knew you were basically useless, good only as a drain on our funds and another bed to furnish, a drunk and a cynic, with no redeeming qualities, but this?” He’s inches away now, Grantaire’s great, blue eyes contracted down to pinpricks, shoulders hunching inward, but he doesn’t turn away. “How are we ever supposed to trust anything you say now,  _when_ _you’ve been lying to me for years_!”

Grantaire is paper white and shuttered, and if Enjolras hadn’t watched him draw himself back into blankness he would never have seen the open devastation that flickered across his eyes.

He wants to take it back, now - he hates that look on Grantaire’s face, hates it with everything in him, and guilt is rising in his stomach like the tide - but then Jehan is standing, right in Enjolras’ space, nose to nose, and he forgets that Jehan has half a hand on him in height sometimes, but he can’t now.

The poet pushes him back through sheer presence, eyes on fire with condemnation and righteous fury, his back straight and his shoulders set. He’s slight, a willowy thing, but in that moment Enjolras feels like he’s staring down someone twice his size and equally as broad. He can’t see Grantaire at all for Jehan’s chest and shoulders, and when he takes a step back Jehan takes one forward, hands at his sides but muscles tense and ready to spring.

Enjolras retreats, startled and apprehensive, because Jehan doesn’t  _get_ angry. Jehan get’s stern, or disapproving, or disappointed, frustrated, outraged, and fed up - but not angry.

And never like this.

“You are going to trust him.” Jehan says, voice cold and sharp, pinning Enjolras with its fury. He sounds like he’s moments away from punching him in the face, and the look he levels on the room is a challenge - come closer, contradict me, if you dare. “You are going to trust Grantaire because I trust Grantaire.” His eyes snap back to Enjolras, and they are black from pupil to iris, the whites a yellow not unlike gold. “And we are both fae.”

**Author's Note:**

> Once again inspired by the ever effervescent [lapieuvrebleue](http://lapieuvrebleue.tumblr.com/), and can be found [here](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/post/65631929227/like-fire-and-powder) on tumblr.
> 
> Hit me up on [tumblr](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/) sometime!


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